A dusky bride puts on jewellery before her wedding. A little girl runs up to her excitedly, and they walk to the mandap together. The girl wants to participate in the pheras. The bride shushes her but the groom, seeing her disappointment, carries the little girl through the pheras. The little girl then asks the groom if she can call him 'daddy'.

This is probably not what you would ever expect to see on Indian television, which is replete with regressive stereotypes about darker-skinned women and second marriages.

But Tanishq jewellery and ad firm Lowe Lintas have broken through the clichés to create an ad that is both refreshing in its simplicity and yet boldly manages to convey a message about the changing perception of women in India.

Directed by Gauri Shinde of English Vinglish fame, the ad has social media buzzing with tributes and criticism, with everyone from designer Masaba Gupta to film maker Nikhil Advani and comedian Rohan Joshi weighing in, despite Shinde herself saying in an interview that there was no conscious decision to choose a dusky model to break taboos.

so proud 2 hav lived to see a time in advertisement where caramel skin& remarriage r celebrated unbashedly by a leading brand.#tanishq#love

"Since the designs are new age, we decided to go with more contemporary trends. And that is why we decided to show the concept of remarriage and how society has opened up to it," Arun Iyer, national creative director at Lowe Lintas, said in an interview.

But not everyone is hopping on the feel-good, change-the-world bandwagon.

"The purpose of every piece of advertising is to close the loop with the product or the brand message. I see that missing in this spot — it appears to be a pseudo support for such a sensitive subject," Manish Bhatt, founder director at Scarecrow Communications, told The Economic Times.

And who can forget Tanishq's Karva Chauth smartphone app — launched only last week — to give users a "detailed compilation of traditional rituals that new couples away from home can use for the festival". Double standards?